Storm's Call
by pastamama
Summary: A broken, battered figure in a trench coat appears to a girl during a storm, and loses consciousness shortly thereafter. Who was he running from, where was he trying to go, and more importantly, what the hell is he doing in South Carolina?


_**Hello, all! Welcome to my very first stab at the Supernatural realm of fanfiction. To those of you who know me from "Act Your Age, Not Your Shoe Size," don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you. I still love you all dearly, but that story is seriously giving me crap like nobody's business. But I digress. I do hope you enjoy, my Supernatural lovelies, and hope to be hearing from you soon!**_

_**Also, this is definitely going to be a lengthy process of getting all of this plot out to you dear people. I'm just gonna say right now that I am terrible at sticking to a regular updating schedule, but I'm really excited for this story and am immensely curious for your responses to this first installment. The next chapters will definitely be longer, I can promise you that. Under 3k words is a rarity for me per chapter, but this one seemed to want to stop early, so I let it. **_

**_ANYWAY! That's enough from me :) please enjoy, and if you feel so inclined, drop a review by! I always want to know what my lovelies are thinking :)_**

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Thunder rumbled and lightning attacked the ground, both accompanied by the heavy, continual symphony of fat raindrops falling to Earth by the bucket. Among the natural chaos laid a dark haired girl, enjoying the dirt washing off the brick walkway and accumulating around her outstretched arms. The rhythm of the rain pounding against her exposed stomach was almost hypnotic in its' irregular patterns, and it kept her dark gaze aimed blindly upwards toward the clouds. She'd made a habit of this, laying out on the bricks in her swimsuit whenever there was a storm. She half hoped that one time she'd be struck by the lightning. This was a detail she never admitted to anyone else. Surely they'd think her suicidal, or a threat to her own health, even though that wasn't the case. However, there were some days when she knew she wouldn't care if the lightning harmed her. If it was the whill of whoever controlled the clouds, who was she to say nay? But the lightning never did strike; it had better plans for her.

This night was hardly different than the others. She'd totally resigned herself to the whimsy of the clouds, and a lightning strike noticeable closer than the others brought a hint of a smile to her lips. Briefly lifting her arms to release the water gathered there, she allowed her eyes to slide shut with a sigh, waiting, hoping, for nature to do as she was thinking. But not hoping. Never hoping.

Just seconds after her eyelids sealed, a flash of light brighter than the rest, and definitely not lightning, permeated her darkness. It had just begun to register that the obligatory clap of thunder had not followed when a voice, distinctly human, called out, followed by a wheezing cough and the sound of feet struggling to keep their owner upright.

"Wha...Help, please...help."

A sound of confusion preceded a deep, monotone voice that snapped the girl's eyes open and brought her to her feet with record speed. She spun, dark eyes scouring the night around her for the source. A sad, dwindling street lamp cast enough illumination for her to make out the outline of a figure, male, she presumed, from the lack of curves. He took a halted step towards her before wincing slightly and bringing a hand to his ribs. More concerned for the stranger's apparent state of disarray than for his potential as a rapist, she hurried to his side, pulling him by the sleeve towards the light to get a better look at him. She gasped at what she saw.

Another sound of confusion escaped from cracked lips, which sat under dark blue eyes that briefly raked over her body, but in curiosity, not perversion. They settled inquisitively on her face as she sized the guy up; a good head taller than herself, but what caught her attention was the red liquid mixing with rain as it leaked out of his rumpled and torn trench coat. A backwards blue tie was angled awkwardly off to the side, the knot much lower and more twisted than it should have been. His white collared shirt below was sticking to his body more and more as the plethora of rain from the sky joined the blood already soaking through it, the fluids attacking the fabric from both sides. The stranger's chest rose and fell rapidly beneath the soiled and clingy shirt.

"What happened to you?" Not the first thing she should be asking, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

"It...it is not of import." A hand gripped her arm with a startling combination of strength and desperation. "Please, help me, they're...they can't be far behind me." Another gasp of pain escaped as he tried, unsuccessfully, to shuffle forward.

"Not of import my ass. Tell me your name, then." He paled and swayed forward unresponsively. "HEY. Your name, buddy, what's your name." A sharp slap brought him back for a moment.

"Cas...Castiel..." He stuttered over the word before his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the ground ungracefully. The only thing keeping his head from knocking against the bricks was the girl's reflexes catching his arms and lowering his now-dead-weight as softly as she could. Peering around, she heard nothing but the rain and saw nothing but the trees, and began to wonder if the guy was schizophrenic or something like that. Nuts or not, he seemed convinced, which was good enough for her. Looking back down at the unconscious man who seemed to have trouble saying his own name, she thought for a moment, a bit stumped on how she was going to singlehandedly transport an unconscious, six-foot figure back to her dorm in a dark storm. As she decided "screw it," and to just go for it, lightning flashed again. Just for a single moment, the lightning seemed to illuminate a shadow that hadn't been there before on Castiel's back. If she hadn't known any better, she would have said it showed up like wings, but that would have been impossible. Lightning doesn't cast shadows off things that aren't there, and she was sure she was sober and not hallucinating. Shrugging it off as a trick of the lights off the trees, she forced Castiel to his unconscious feet, slinging one of his arms around her shoulder and one of hers around his waist. It was a surprisingly effective setup, and thankfully there was no one milling around to see her dragging a man back to her room at god-knows-what-time-of-night.

Unlocking the door while keeping Castiel on his feet was quite the endeavor, but a successful one nonetheless. Her now-soaked guest was deposited on her roommate's bed, who was thankfully gone for a semester abroad. Blood and water began to soak the sheets, and she made a mental note to wash them before the semester was up. Unsure, she left him sprawled awkwardly on the sheets while she toweled herself off and put on some warmer clothes. Once her hair was effectively tied up in a sloppy blob atop her head, she set to work peeling off Castiel's ruined clothing. It took some rolling and yanking to get the trench coat off him, and a vest the same shade of blue as his tie was found stuck to the inside of it, just as bloody as the rest of him. An eyebrow crept up in confusion as she separated the pieces and hung them over the bathroom door and a bedpost. The tie followed, and the hand she pulled his head up by the neck with came away with even more blood, presumably trickling from a cut hidden in his hair. Grimacing, she wiped her hand on the towel she'd tossed on the floor earlier. The white shirt came away after that, and what was revealed on his bare skin trumped all the oddities he'd displayed thus far.

A long slice that couldn't be too terribly deep, but looked painful, wrapped from almost on his back all the way around his side to end at the point of his sternum. On both his wrists, there were bruises in what seemed to be the shape of fingers, almost like someone had held his hands behind his back with the force of handcuffs,

and he'd struggled. Another cut, seemingly shorter than the other one, vanished under his trousers after making a short appearance in the hollow of his hipbone. The thing that most caught her attention on his torso was the one thing that wasn't an angry red and leaking blood; a scar right in the middle of his chest. It was a sloppy circle with some strange symbol in the middle, and to her horror, it looked like someone had carved it into him. Swallowing the apprehension at what she'd find, she quickly undid the snap of his pants and tugged them off, quickly locating a towel and covering the essentials with it. More bruises dotted his legs, but they looked more like punches than grips. Sighing resignedly, she dug the first aid kit her paranoid roommate had insisted they get out from their closet and flipped it open, realizing she had quite the night ahead of her in patching her passed-out guest up. Now arranged more normally on the bed, Castiel looked smaller without his coat to hide in, and the injuries stood out against increasingly pale skin. Lightning once again interrupted her inspection of him, flashing that wing-like shadow coming out from his back again, only this time, it was pasted on the wall, spanning out from the shoulder-blades he was currently laying on and she was afraid to look at for fear of what further remnants of his enemy's abuse would be waiting there. Just as quickly as they'd appeared, the wings vanished, and so did the illumination from the lightning. Shaking her head, she flipped on her desk lamp and tugged a thick blanket over Castiel's legs, hoping they'd warm up while she tended to his torso. After seeing them a second time, she couldn't shake the shadowy, fleeting visage of those wings from her mind. She'd sworn she saw them _move _the second time, and in the room, there weren't any trees or leaves to blame it on. Pushing the concern for her own sanity aside, she dutifully set to work patching up her guest with the technique of a woman who'd seen one too many bar fights. Her mind was allowed to wander as her work progressed, but it always came back to the identity of the man on her roommate's bed.

_Who the hell are you really, Castiel?_


End file.
